BOSTON — Four-and-a-half months into his rocky Red Sox tenure, starter Walker Buehler faced a new reality Tuesday night at Fenway Park as manager Alex Cora managed his outing more aggressively than he has all season.
Buehler entered his outing against the Orioles with a respectable 3.69 ERA in seven starts since July 5 but that didn’t stop Cora from looking toward his bullpen earlier than usual as the Red Sox tried to avoid their eighth loss in 12 games. In the fourth inning, Cora had lefty Justin Wilson start warming as No. 9 hitter Alex Jackson came to bat with two runners in scoring position and two outs. Buehler escaped that jam but was lifted two batters into the fifth when Jackson Holliday led off with a double and Buehler walked Luis Vázquez on four pitches.
With star shortstop Gunnar Henderson due up, in came Wilson, who entering the night had held left-handed hitters to a .164 average and .416 OPS this season. Buehler was lifted at just 75 pitches with the Red Sox leading, 1-0.
“At some point, the leash I’m given has been earned,” Buehler said after a 4-3 Red Sox loss. “I think they did the right thing in coming to get me before the Henderson at-bat. Our bullpen has been great. For me personally, I think everything went according to plan until the fifth. You go double, four-pitch walk. The way I’ve been throwing it, it all kind of makes sense.”
The outing was, in terms of pitches, the fourth shortest of Buehler’s season. On May 20, he threw just 54 pitches in 2 ⅓ innings against the Mets before being ejected for arguing balls and strikes. The other shorter starts were a June 6 disaster in which he lasted just two innings (67 pitches) and allowed seven runs in the Bronx and an abbreviated outing in which he allowed three homers and four runs to the Blue Jays on June 29.
Cora has most of his high-leverage relievers available and wanted to use them with the team off Wednesday. The plan backfired early, as Wilson and Greg Weissert allowed three runs in relief of Buehler in the fifth. Boston rallied to tie the game on a clutch Nathaniel Lowe two-run homer in the ninth but went 0-for-13 with runners in scoring position and stranded 13 runners in a brutal, 11-inning loss.
“In the fifth, I took a chance with the lefty, thinking about the second hitter (Vázquez),” Cora said. “We get him out and nobody on, we’d let (Buehler) face the third hitter, but we went to the bullpen. Just trying to get as many outs as possible earlier in the game and mix and match later and it didn’t work out.
“I could be more aggressive, actually, and I wasn’t. I waited until the third hitter in that inning.”
Cora said he was impressed with Buehler’s pitch mix again Tuesday but that his four walks represented a problem that is not getting better. The ex-Dodger has now walked 36 batters in his last 54 ⅓ innings over 11 starts and has issued at least three free passes in eight of those outings. His walk rate, which was 2.4 per nine innings in his first seven big league seasons, rose to 4.4 this year.
“It’s (expletive) embarrassing, man,” Buehler said. “I think the last time I walked this many in a season, I threw 207 innings. It just sucks.”
With 35 games left to play, the Red Sox know it’s crunch time and Cora’s handling of Buehler on Tuesday might be an indicator of larger decisions to come. In recent weeks, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions, the Red Sox have been re-assessing Buehler’s rotation spot and talking about the possibility of inserting someone like Kyle Harrison (who pitched Tuesday) or Cooper Criswell from Triple-A. Further struggles could lead to Buehler being shifted to the bullpen or cut from the team as the calendar turns from August to September.
For now, the righty has a 5.40 ERA through 110 innings and is on track to start Monday in Baltimore as the Red Sox start the second half of a two-city road trip.
“What do you think?” said Buehler when asked for an assessment of his season through 22 starts. “To be completely frank with you, we can have these questions as much as we want and I can tell you how hard I’m working and how hard we all are working and all that (expletive). At the end of the day, it’s not going so good.”
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